


Shelter

by Lakritzwolf



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lakritzwolf/pseuds/Lakritzwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/127826595685/summer-fandom-raffle-exchange-prompts-masterlist">Summer Raffle Fandom Exchange</a>  on tumblr<br/>Prompt 132: Person A is a German that hides person B, a Jew, from the Nazis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shelter

**Author's Note:**

> I took a tiny bit of liberty, in that person A is not a German but a man from an English family living in Germany.  
> There is a hover text for the English translations for every German sentence.

He’d never thought that this would ever lose its terror, but after these last few months, all he felt was a heavy tiredness; fear, yes, fear too, but not as much as the first time when the sirens had screamed through the night and he and his parents had crawled into the reinforced back room of their cellar. It was no more than a makeshift hideout, but the nearest air raid shelter was three blocks away. 

And here they were again, Fili, his mother and his uncle, huddling against the back wall of the room and listening to the howling sirens. The first bomb hit far away, just a tremor felt through the concrete walls. But the next ones came closer and closer, the earth trembled, the walls of the cellar vibrated, and plaster rained down from cracks in the ceiling. 

“This is it,” Fili whispered.  
“Stop talking like that.” Thorin, his uncle, had the calm composure of a man sitting in a train, not hiding away in a bomb shelter. But then, Thorin had managed to survive the first great war, the terrible depression that had followed, and had even kept the secret of his sexuality hidden with the help of his sister. That’s what he had told him from the beginning, this was what being a Durin was all about: Loyalty. Fili’s mother, Thorin’s sister, had faked a marriage license. Now Dís, widowed since the first war that had claimed her husband but let her brother come home, was raising her son with her brother who pretended to be her husband. A risky move. With the advancing madness in the system, and due to the fact that the Durins were no Germans even if they were the second generation of the family that had settled here after coming over the channel, they were under closer scrutiny than ever. 

When the madness had started in 1933, things had seemed to go into the right direction. A few years later, when fear began to spread, Dis’s and Thorin’s mother had begged her husband to go back to England. Thrain had been convinced that they had nothing to fear as they had nothing to hide, and now Fili’s grandparents had never seen their homeland again, having died in one of the first bombings. 

And then it was too late to leave. With the strict controls and pass laws, Thorin and Dís did no longer dared to brave the emigration controls, for fear that their faked marriage license would be discovered. Luckily, Thorin’s stiff leg, a souvenir from the first great war, had saved him from being called into service again, and luckily, he had been able to spare his nephew the fate of being turned into cannon fodder in constructing a mental health history for him. And then, with even more luck, they had managed to keep under the radar. 

Despite the news and the fanfares and the propaganda, every sane person was in no doubt whatsoever that Germany was losing the war. But whoever so much as thought aloud about surrender was put against the nearest wall. 

“How much longer?” Dís asked into the heavy silence.  
“I have no idea.” Thorin’s voice was low. “I can’t imagine that Germany can hold on for much longer, but then, Hitler is a madman and if he cannot win, he will take everyone around him with him into oblivion.”  
“Why?” Fili looked up at his uncle and mother. A question he had asked hundredths of times, and every time, no one had been able to come up with an answer.  
“We talk about a man who wants to annihilate millions of people just because he believes himself above them.”

Another bomb fell, so close that the walls around them shook and another rain of plaster fell from the ceiling, covering all three of them in crumbs and dust.

Fili had asked the question of why they had not left as many times as why this was happening. Thrain had believed it could never become as bad as they had feared, and now it had turned out to be far, far worse.

Above, the sirens finally stopped, and the three of them left the shelter again. 

This time, it had been a close shave. There wasn’t a single window in the whole neighbourhood that had remained intact. Debris littered the streets, and from far away, they heard the shouts of soldiers and the roar of their machine guns. Two dead men were lying face down on the other side of the street.

“What is going on there?” Fili asked. “Why are they shooting..?”  
“The more important question is, whom are they shooting?” Thorin took Fili’s arm. “Come inside, boy.”

Just before he stepped through the door, Fili turned around again. He could see the soldiers now, and they were chasing civilians, yelling curses... and shooting on sight.

“Thorin?”  
“Come inside!”  
“Oh my god, Thorin...” Fili resisted the tug at his sleeve. “They’re shooting civilians!”  
“Deserters, more likely.” Thorin now closed his hand around Fili’s arm. “Now.”  
This time, Fili followed the tug, but still turned around again one last time.

It was then that he saw him, a young man his own age or even younger, and he was tearing off the grey coat of one of the dead men, anxiously looking up and behind him. When he scrambled to his feet again and hastily slung the coat on, Fili saw it: The telltale flash of a yellow star.

“Thorin, they’re Jews.”  
Thorin froze, and very slowly, turned around. The young man had not seen them yet, hidden in the doorway as they were, and was walking quickly, head down, into their direction.  
“The bombing must have disturbed a deportation convoy. You know what cousin Dwalin told us about the that,” Fili said.  
“Of course I do.” Thorin took a step back. “But...”

The young Jew now rounded the corner and froze. His head spun round, and Fili saw the raw terror in wide, brown eyes. Greasy, unruly strands of black curly hair hung into his face and he clutched the coat in front of his chest with dirty, bony fingers. He shook his head, mouth open as if in a silent scream.

“Lauf,” Thorin said. “ Wir haben dich nicht gesehen .” 

It took the young man less than a second to gather his wits together, he lowered his head again and vanished between the nailed up houses further down the street.  
“Will he make it?” Fili asked as he had closed the door behind him.  
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Thorin looked darkly at his hands. 

They all knew it, though. The young man didn’t stand a chance, they could hear the soldiers outside. And then someone hammered at their door.

“Aufmachen! Sofort aufmachen!”,”

Dís clutched her shawl with one hand and slowly, opened the door with the other. A couple soldiers pushed past her and stomped up the stairs.

“Was hat das zu bedeuten?” Thorin asked the commanding officer.  
“Wir haben einen flüchtigen Juden zu finden.”  
“Hier finden Sie ihn nicht, Kommadant.” Thorin lowered his eyebrows. “Mit derartigem Gezücht will ich nichts zu schaffen haben.”  
The officer looked at him with narrow eyes, but then the soldiers came back and saluted. “Keine Spur, Herr Kommadant!  
“Weitersuchen.”  
The two soldiers vanished.

“Sollte sich der Jude zeigen werde ich Sie umgehend benachrichtigen,” Thorin said to the officer.  
The officer nodded and saluted. “Heil Hitler!”  
“Heil Hitler!” Thorin returned the salute, and the soldiers vanished again.

Fili sank against the wall with a sigh as soon as the door had closed.

That night, Fili couldn’t sleep. The face of the young Jew, those terrified eyes and the emaciated face haunted him and refused to let him be. It was past midnight when he gave up on sleep and tip-toed into the kitchen. Dís and Thorin were both asleep, and the kitchen was silent safe for the ticking of the clock. Fili stared out of the window and listened to the passing seconds. Wondered how many he had left, if the next bomb carpet would annihilate his home as well. 

Then he wondered what the young, nameless Jew was doing now, where he was hiding, if he was still alive. Thorin had done what he could for the boy. For a boy it had been, Fili was sure he was even younger than he himself was. He could be his younger brother.  
The motto of the Durin family suddenly appeared in his mind. Loyalty. Honour. A willing heart. 

Fili squared his shoulders and then, as silently as he could, opened the breadbox. There was the new bread his mother had made, but there was also the heel of the old one. He took it, slipped it into his pocked, and silently headed for the stairs. His boots in his hands he then carefully opened the door, peeked outside and strained his ears. When he neither heard nor saw anything, he closed the door behind him, put on his boots, and, keeping to the shadows, headed for the nailed up ruins he had seen the Jew vanish in. 

Moonlight lit the interior of the ruin, as there was nothing of the roof left. It was only a block away from Fili’s home, a really close shave. It could have easily been his own home lying in ruins now, the house a bombed-out shell. He crept along the walls, and strained his ears.

“Hallo?” He whispered.  “Ist da jemand?”

No answer.

“Du brauchst keine Angst zu haben. Ich hab ein Stück Brot für dich. Ich will dir helfen.”

There was nothing. Fili took the heel of bread from his picked and looked around. There was a piece of masonry that would have made a serviceable makeshift table, and he placed the bread right in the middle of it. 

“Ich will dir helfen. Hab keine Angst.”

A rustle to the left caught his attention, but it might have been only a rat.

“Bist du das? Ich verrate dich nicht, ich schwöre es!”  But then, he knew, he could easily be a spy, a Judas, who was to draw the boy out of his hiding place so he could be arrested.  “Hör mir zu. Wenn wir dich and die Soldaten hätten ausliefern wollen dann hätte mein Vater dich nicht gedeckt und gesagt wir hätten nichts gesehen.”

There was another rustle, and something moved in the shadows. Fili took a step back, and then he could see the boy, coming towards him, wary like a frightened animal. He eyed the bread, eyes growing bigger and bigger, and Fili stepped into the moonlight with an encouraging smile. The boy came closer, slowly and hesitantly, and when he had reached the slab of stone, he had grabbed the bread and pocketed it so quickly that Fili almost missed the movement. 

“Danke,”  he heard the whisper from the darkness. And then: “Warum?”  
“Weil ich in zehn Jahren immer noch in einen Spiegel sehen können will. Weil ich ein Gewissen habe, und mein Vater auch. Weil es unmenschlich ist und grausam, was man euch antut.”

But before the boy could answer, they heard the steps of nailed boots coming down the street. Soldiers.

“Schnell! Versteck dich!”  
“Du auch!” The boy waved at him and Fili followed. There was a crack between the wall and the ground that led into a cellar. There they cowered against the back wall, holding their breath, until the patrol was gone again.

Fili nodded towards the young man and crawled out of the little hole. He straightened up, brushed the dust from his jacket and trousers and headed home again. 

The bombs fell again the very next day. And that evening, when Fili was sure his parents were asleep, he stole away again, this time with an apple. It was so little, it would hardly keep the boy alive, but they had so little themselves and he simply dared not to take more. He didn’t even know if the Jewish boy had survived the bombs, but he had to check. 

“Hallo?” He whispered once he had crawled through the gap in the boards into the empty house.  “Ich hab einen Apfel für dich.”

He had indeed survived the attack, and took the apple with a grateful nod. 

From that day, Fili sought out the young Jew every night. For two weeks, he came every night, sometimes he had something to eat, and sometimes not. But he checked every single evening if he was still there. 

It was when he came with a small piece of bread again that they exchanged a few words again for the first time after Fili had found him.

“Ich schulde dir mein Leben,” the boy said. “Wie kann ich dir das je vergelten?”  
“Ich brauche keinen Lohn,” Fili gave back.  “Ich tue das, was richtig ist.”  
“Aber...” The boy shook his head and took a step forward.  “Ich muss doch...”  
“Du must gar nichts, ausser zu überleben bis dieser Wahnsinn ein Ende hat.”

But to his utter mortification, the boy went down onto his knees before him.  “Du kannst mich gebrauchen, wenn du das wünschst.”  
Fili was too shocked to answer. Here he was only trying to do the right thing, and the young man, hardly more than a boy, was offering him his own body as payment. He violently shook his head. The boy not only smelled rancid, his hair was matted with dirt and the way he kept scratching his head it was also crawling with lice. But it wasn’t that which put him off.  
It were those brown eyes, so huge in the hollow-cheeked face, that looked up at him with such desperation and anxiety that Fili felt his stomach turn. 

“Nein. Ich will keinen Lohn, und solchen erst recht nicht. Steh auf und versteck dich wieder.”  With that, he spun around on his heels and headed home in what was almost a run. He felt sick to the core of his soul. The next shock awaited him when he came home. He had taken off his boots outside the door, but when he opened it, the light was switched on and Fili looked into the face of his uncle, his arms crossed, and a dark look in his eyes. He could see his mother stand behind him, her eyes wide with worry and fear.

“I hope for your and all our sakes that you come home from a tête-à-tête and that it is a nice girl you bring the stolen food.”  
Fili felt all colour drain from his face.  
“God damnit, Fili, do you have any idea how dangerous this is?” Thorin dropped his arms and took Fili’s shoulders, shaking him so hard his teeth rattled. “Are you out of your mind? If you are found out then it is not only your life but mine and your mother’s as well that is forfeit! What were you thinking?!”

Fili swallowed hard and met his uncle’s eyes. “Honour. Loyalty. A willing heart. That was what I was thinking. No Durin should ever turn his back on someone who is helpless like that, and I won’t. Not when I can help him.”  
Now it was Thorin’s turn to swallow hard. “Sometimes, you have to decide between honour and survival.”  
“But... but Uncle...”  
“Fili, your thoughts and notions honour you. But I am responsible for this family, and I have to protect all of you. And when it comes to making a decision to protect my family or help a boy on the run, then...”  
“But he...”  
“Fili...”

“Thorin.” Dis took a step forward. “You have seen the boy. We all have seen him. And we all know what awaits him should the soldiers ever find him.”  
“But we can’t...”  
“And you know that those soldiers will find out who it was that was helping him to survive.”  
“Oh my god...” Fili fell against the wall. “Oh my god...”  
“Fili.” His mother put a hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing. I understand your uncle, though. This is too dangerous.”  
“But what am I supposed to do now? If they catch him, and he... Uncle...” He took a deep breath. “He even offered me his body as a payment.”  
Thorin’s face went white as he stared at his nephew. And after a long, heavy breath, he shook his head and closed his eyes.  
It was his mother, however, who spoke. “Bring him here.”

Both Thorin and Fili stared at her with mouths agape. “Bring him here, we hide him down in the shelter. If they find him here or wherever it is he is hiding now, it won’t make a difference. And if he is down there, the chances of him remaining hidden are much better than out there.”  
“Dís, you are mad.”  
“Am I?” She crossed her arms. “Am I mad for caring about an innocent boy who faces torture and death because he calls god by another name than we do? Is it mad I care for a boy that could be my son’s little brother?”  
“No! But think about that son of yours! Don’t risk his life for...”  
“For what? You have already put our lives on the line for telling the soldiers we didn’t see him.”

Thorin fell silent. He looked back and forth between his nephew and his sister, and finally sighed, his shoulders drooping. “Bring him here,” he said. “And may god have mercy on us if we are ever found out.”

After a moment of heavy silence, Fili put on his boots again, and after his mother had turned off the lights, he left the house again. He came back not half an hour later with the boy in tow. 

“Quick.” Thorin pulled the two inside and locked the door behind him. “I hope and pray no one saw you.”

The boy looked even more frightened than before, and after weeks of hiding in a hole in the ground with barely enough to eat to keep him alive he was so haggard he looked like an old man despite the black beard that covered most of his face. He was crying, too, and his tears washed two white stripes into the grime on his face. 

“Quick,” Dís said and took his hands, ignoring the dirt and smell.  “Schnell. Hier entlang.” And dragged the boy down the stairs and through the cellar into the shelter. 

No one had ever asked his name. He was kept out of sight and earshot, and only after nightfall would Fili lead him upstairs and across the yard to use the privy. Dís had taken his shirt and vest and given him an old one of her husband, and Thorin had burned the old garments with the telltale yellow star in the kitchen stove. The first slice of bread with butter that Dís had given him had him in tears again, but what little they had to spare was not able to restore his strength. 

They hid him down in their cellar for three weeks. And then the news reached them and every corner of the country: Unconditional surrender. The war was over.

The first steps in daylight had the young Jew in tears again, he wept and wept and could not stop, unable to believe that it was over, that he had survived and was a free man again. He bowed deeply with tears of joy and gratitude on his face, and once Dís had supplied him with a small bundle, wrapped in an old chequered red and white napkin, containing a piece of bread and a piece of cheese, he had bowed again and left them to find whomever might have remained of his family.

The Durin family moved back to England after that, back to Yorkshire, leaving their tailoring business and the fears of the past behind, starting anew in the land of their forefathers, their old and new home.

They would occasionally talk about the boy, wondering if he had found his family, what he was going right now. Five years passed, and the wounds the war torn slowly began to heal.

And then, one day on a beautiful sunny autumn day, shortly before noon, when Fili was weeding the front garden together with his mother while Thorin was chopping wood, someone hailed them.

“Good day.” 

All three of them looked up at the young man who was smiling at them. He was tall and lean, but in a graceful way, wearing a suit made of fine, brown tweed and a halfpenny cap that he now respectfully removed. He had well-groomed, black and shiny hair, and from the look of it, seemed to be one of those men who were stuck with a permanent five-o’clock-shadow.

Thorin put down the axe and walked towards the gate in the fence. “Can I help you, sir?”  
“Mr Thorin Durin?”  
“The very same.”  
The young man inclined his head. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rosenfeld, but I do not expect the name to mean anything to you. I do, however, have something that I believe belongs to your family.” With that, he reached into his jacket and produced a piece of cloth. “Mrs Durin?”  
Dís walked over to the fence and wiped the dirt off her hands. “Yes?”

The young man handed Dís the piece of fabric with a gentle smile, and Dís took it, her hands suddenly trembling. It was an old and threadbare napkin, made from chequered red and white cloth.

“Mother of mercy,” Dís whispered as she took the old napkin. “Is this possible?”  
Fili had gotten up and looked at the cloth, but it was only when he looked at the young man again, and noticed the deep brown eyes, that he recognised him. “You...” He unceremoniously vaulted the fence, and the merry laugh of the young Mr Rosenfeld warmed his heart and his soul. “My god... is that really you?”  
“It is. Assuming that you are referring to a young boy you were hiding from the Nazis.”

Overcome by feelings, and his eyes brimming with tears, Fili held out both hands, and Rosenfeld took them. 

“I’m sorry we never asked your name.”  
“I understand. The less you knew, the better.”  
“Filbert Durin,” Fili said. “At your service. My friends call me Fili, however.”  
“Malkiel Rosenfeld,” the other man replied. “My friends call me Kili. At your service.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, both their eyes spilling over, before they stepped towards each other and embraced.


End file.
